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Why Google's New Tablet Could Be The iPad's First Real Competition

Google is just a couple of days away from debuting a new tablet that could finally shake up a market utterly dominated so far by Apple’s iPad.

Reports from Gizmodo and others say Google is likely to introduce the diminutive 7-inch tablet at its Google I/O developers conference (whose Wednesday keynote I will be covering live here). The kicker, according to the reports: The tablet, built by Asus, will start at $199 for an 8 GB of memory, up to $249 for a 16 GB version. Update: Bloomberg confirmed the co-branded tablet.

Amazon.com’s Kindle Fire already plowed this pricing ground, of course, so such a tablet wouldn’t be entirely new. But while the Fire has been reasonably successful for Amazon, it hasn’t made much of an apparent dent in the iPad because of its limitations, including a somewhat app platform controlled by Amazon itself. And the Fire doesn’t run a standard version of Android, making it tougher yet for developers to do apps for it.

Let’s not forget Microsoft‘s coming Surface tablet, either. But the reported pricing on that device, introduced last week, sounds quite close to the iPad’s. So unless it’s significantly better, which seems doubtful, it seems unlikely to mount a serious challenge.

But Google’s tablet, assuming as Chairman Eric Schmidt has promised (and this is a very big assumption) that it performs well, could for the first time challenge the iPad. And it would come at a time when tablets are the focus of everyone in tech from chipmakers and hardware manufacturers to app developers to marketers and publishers hoping to capitalize on a new mobile Internet device that could give them the creative canvas to rival (or exceed) the appeal of television and magazines. Here’s why Google might have a hit this time:

* It’s cheap. Now, merely being cheap won’t guarantee people will buy it in sufficient numbers to matter. But at $199, it doesn’t have to be every bit as good as the iPad. As Clayton Christensen has noted in cases dating all the way back to the transistor radio in the 1950s, a rival can most successfully challenge an established incumbent not by matching it feature-by-feature, but by offering something good enough for most people for a lot less money.

* The rock-bottom price will attract more app developers. If it’s decent enough to sell a lot thanks to the low price, that suddenly makes Android a more attractive platform for app developers. One of several reasons the iPad is the most popular app platform is that Apple controls the operating system version so developers don’t need to rewrite an app for each device running different versions.

Android is so fractured that it has been too much hassle for many developers to bother creating several versions of their app to run on devices running various Android versions. But all it takes is a hit product using the latest version of Android that sells in the millions–admittedly, not an easy goal to meet–to create that single standard that would help make Android apps a must for developers.

Of course, there are many reasons why this tablet, assuming it does indeed materialize (and today, that’s not a sure thing), could fall flat. Google’s record on its own hardware is poor, between the ill-fated Nexus smartphone to the Chromebook cloud notebook. And it has to overcome a considerable backlog of skepticism by developers about Android. Indeed, AllThingsD’s Ina Fried makes a good point that unless Google can persuade developers to create more tablet-native apps, it won’t matter how good the hardware is.

What’s more, Apple no doubt has some pricing tricks up its sleeve, so it could come out with a cheaper tablet. Given Apple’s brand, unmatched design expertise, and quality control, it needn’t match Google’s price–just get a little closer–to keep a not-as-good $200 tablet at bay.

Not least, depending on which features it sports, Google could end up mostly battling the Kindle Fire, leaving Apple’s iPad to remain popular even at a much higher price.

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I have to agree with the folks who question the appeal of this to developers based on the low price. I know a bit about the topic (I actually develop iPhone apps on the side), and the fact is that iOS users are just far more willing to spend money on apps (both at point of purchase and in-app) than Android users. There are countless great apps that started with iOS and were eventually ported to Android (from Angry Birds to Instagram), but almost none that went the other way. A cheap Android is unlikely to change that.

So, if it sells in the millions, that won’t matter to developers? Hard to believe. That’s a big “if,” of course. But if an audience/potential customer base of millions doesn’t matter to you, I bet it will to many others.

As long as Apple continues to produce a quality product with an interface that works as easily as it does NOBODY is going to come close to impacting Apple. What techies fail to understand is that the overwhelming number of people that buy these devices do so for only a few intended purposes.

The kids, gamers and grown ups living in never never land get all wrapped up in “how many” apps…as if somehow “more” is better. LOL…

Prediction: Apple will release a newer version of the iPad that will “knock the socks” off this competitor and they will probably use the buzz this Google device generates to introduce it; Many will ot buy it if apple releases a hint of a newer smaller less expensive Min iPad… + It is an Apple and that means a lot, considering they have the BEST store and are usually problem free… + Apple could “regain” any lost market share by offering a small rebate to Owners of other Apple Tech (iMac, iPhone, Apple TV since they all would “talk” and “play nice together” especially in the iCloud…

The interesting thing to me is that all of the tablet wannabe’s seem to be competing with each other, not Apple. To date, no one has steppted up to the plate with a genuinely innovative product at any price. When the iPad first came out I felt that this was a significant tool for business user, especially small business users. As many of these that have been sold, I am of the opinion that most of the tablets are just expensive surfing toys. When is Apple or someone else going to put a small USB port on the tablet so you can interface directly with a home computer rather than having to transmit stuff electronically. As an alternative, where is a wireless printer driver? As a small business man, I would love to take jobsite notes on a tablet and then be able to directly download or print material rather than have to resort to the great electronic black hole. I admit to not being a young and technologically gifted savant, but there are many times when your end result needs to be a document.

Having a hardware product like a tablet is a source of pride to many, a symbol of accomplishment. It’s something you can touch and feel in a world that is almost all virtual (Google, Facebook, Microsoft).

I’ve been predicting a Facebook tablet for several years now. Add a built-in Office suite, maybe some push to talk communications and you are off to the races in some minds.

The recent distrust of Facebook may dash that idea, but would you be surprised? Probably not.

Virtual reality headsets and gloves would be a more impressive display of innovation. Do we find ourselves in a world in which Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft are driving innovation down, because all four of them have no really new ideas and are scrambling to compete for the old ones?

Fabrication plants have reduced transistor sizes to the point where GFLOPS fit on the head of a pin and quantum mechanics limits further reduction. This is where the innovation lies.

Lack of vision on the part of PC manufacturers means we have no real choice. It’s a tablet from Apple, Google or Microsoft, which is somewhat pitiful, given that NASA sent Armstrong to the moon without the computing power of the modern CPU and GPU.